Picture is locked on The Stranger, my thesis film. We're currently in sound design. A friend of mine compared the stills of the storyboard images to that of the final product and challenged me to do the same to see how much variance I had, keeping in mind that change can often be for the better.

I was happy to find that most of the shot my DP and I planned were 99% the frame we shot. There were subtle deviations of angle, often to better emphasize the moment or find more depth in the frame, but our ability to visualize what we were looking before shooting felt very strong. that pre-visualization came through the edit - there was only one or two frames I wished I could have adjusted slightly for story purposes. Overall, I was very happy with what we planned and what we ended up with - two very similar products.

Below are two examples of my comparisons. The first is one of the the most varied shots in the film. The top image is the storyboard, the bottom image was captured on set for the final cut.

Below is a good example of how most of our shots lined up with the storyboarded images. Again, the top frame is the planned image and the bottom is the final version.

If nothing else, I'm proud of how our two years studying film has taught us to be efficient, economical, and exact. We're flexible on set if a better idea presents itself, but we're also able to speculate in advance to save ourselves precious time when shooting. Comparing that skill to what we accomplished on our first projects here is day and night!